Mass Effect 3

It's funny though, because if you choose Spacer, you basically had a peaceful upbringing and your mom (or dad?) is an admiral in the fleet. I *think* that comes up in ME3, and you're given an opportunity to ask if they're okay after the attack on Earth, but I could be making that up.

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After Rannoch, Hackett tells you that Hannah Shepard has been located, recruited for the Crucible project, and promoted to Rear Admiral.

And I just realized that, even though I'm pretty sure one of my Sheps had a Spacer background, I never went through the Spacer quest in ME1...

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Good to know. I've got two Spacers, I'm actually about to start one of them right now. I don't recall my Colonist or Earthborn Shepards' backstories contributing to the game, but then again, only the Spacer's really fits.

It would have been cool if the Earthborn meets up with a fellow former street rat who's now fighting for the Alliance. Maybe they could have put Javik on Mindoir instead of Eden Prime. I always did find it kind of weird that they never showed one of Shepard's potential homeworlds, even if just on the galaxy map.

When the game tells you that millions of humans are being harvested by the Reapers everyday and you're off having coffee with Liara at the cafe or shooting beer cans with Garrus, there's already a disconnect. Forcing this new narrative element onto the player in the third game - especially when she has already seen two human colonies (Eden Prime and Horizon) wiped out and basically brushed it off, it just seems awkwardly written at best.

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Gameplay & Story are always going to clash, especially in a game like Mass Effect. People would go mental without the side stuff built into the game (myself included).

Yeah, goofy as the setup is, it's an RPG and you have to expect stuff like that. Personally I didn't have a problem with it. I pretend that the eavesdropping go-fetch missions don't actually happen in the "real story," they're just a gameplay convention.

Ah, I tell a lie, there's the news reports too for both the origin and career history.

It's funny though, because if you choose Spacer, you basically had a peaceful upbringing and your mom (or dad?) is an admiral in the fleet. I *think* that comes up in ME3, and you're given an opportunity to ask if they're okay after the attack on Earth, but I could be making that up.

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No you're right. At some point later on in the game Hackett mentions she's turned up with her ship. I think there's also mention of her early on when you ask Garrus about his family.

Honestly, I like the little touches like that as it helps to flesh things out a little, informs in how you might characterize them and makes it that much easier to distinguish between one's different Sheps.

For example, my main Shep is an Earthborn Sole Survivour. Now when I picked those I didn't know that it would give a heavy renegade bonus, I just thought they were interesting. She had a rough upbringing, did a lot of stuff she's not proud of to survive (in my mind, she's basically Matilda from Leon...maybe mixed in with a little Bean from Ender's Shadow ;-) ) and enlisted to escape the life. This gives her a very tough outer shell and a very low BS tolerance, but also a deep sense of duty and personal honour. She holds herself to a very high standard, though mostly out of a deep seated sense of inadequacy and fear of letting other people down.

As you can imagine, the dreams fit very well with this character, as did the sort of surrogate father/daughter relationship she had with Anderson.

Conversely, my renegade Shep is a Ruthless Spacer. An arrogant navy brat, almost sociopathic in his lack of empathy and has a very direct, goal oriented view of problems. Not much in the way guile or cunning, but he has a selfish streak a mile wide.

My paragon Shep is a colonist war hero and I played her as a high functioning psychopath and borderline schizophrenic. She's very careful about controlling her impulses and keeping up appearances to such a degree that doing the "right thing" has almost become a reflex action. Not so much a wolf in sheep's clothing as a wolf that's convinced itself it's a sheep.

I pretend that the eavesdropping go-fetch missions don't actually happen in the "real story," they're just a gameplay convention.

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Yeh pretty much I kind of think the same and it would be interesting to see the movies if they ever happen what sort of cannon they will pick n choose from.

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I think it'd be funny if they just picked *all* of the back story options!

*deep breath*

The child of two career navy officers, born in space but settled on a colony when they mustered out. The colony get wiped out and Shepard, still just a child gets sent back to Earth, but runs away from the orphanage/foster home and ends up on the streets all through adolescence. After enlistment Shepard's entire squad is wiped out by thresher maws. While on convalescent leave on Elysium, Batarian pirates hit the colony and Shepard single handedly holds a gap in the defences, saving thousands and earning a quick promotion and the assignment to lead the counter attack.

Damn, you could almost make a whole movie just about that. They could call it 'Mass Effect Origins: I Hate Space Pirates!'

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Almost forgot. If anyone's interested, you can download the EC soundtrack for free here, straight from Bioware.

If any of you cool cats are as into the series' music as I am, you'll be just as happy to know that BioWare has decided to release the seven-track Extended Cut OST for free download from their site. You need either an Origin (ew) or a BioWare Social Network (not so ew) account in order to download, though, I believe. I have a BSN account, so it was easy-peasy. It's just a forum account, don't worry.

Ah, so they are, ATimson, so they are. Good to know, I suppose. I still play Mass Effect on 360, but I'm switching over to PC sometime soon now that I have one capable of playing things more graphically complex than Final Fantasy VII.

So I'm listening to the soundtrack, and I think it's a lot better than I originally gave it credit for. I still wish Jack Wall had stuck around for ME3 (does anyone know what exactly happened there?), but Sam Hulick and company still did a good job.

I think it's pretty lame that they made a big deal about Clint Mansell coming on to do the music, but then he only ended up being responsible for two tracks (Leaving Earth and An End, Once and For All).

So I'm listening to the soundtrack, and I think it's a lot better than I originally gave it credit for. I still wish Jack Wall had stuck around for ME3 (does anyone know what exactly happened there?), but Sam Hulick and company still did a good job.

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With Clint Mansell's contribution being announced in February 2011, and the other composers not starting work until October 2011, it really looks to me like the change to Clint was entirely Bioware's choice, and then the other composers picked up the slack last-minute when he fell through.

Yeah, that really wouldn't surprise me. I do miss Jack Wall, absolutely, but I've realized that overall I always kinda preferred Sam Hulick, and I feel as though much of Sam's finest work in the trilogy has come from ME3.

With Clint Mansell's contribution being announced in February 2011, and the other composers not starting work until October 2011, it really looks to me like the change to Clint was entirely Bioware's choice, and then the other composers picked up the slack last-minute when he fell through.

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I'm not sure if we can read too much into that, the scores to ME1 and ME2 were both the work of multiple composers, it's more than possible that Bioware always intended to get multiple composers involved in ME3 and that Clint Mansell was only hired for the main theme. Bioware got what they wanted out of the deal, Clint's name in big letters on the cover of the soundtrack, while most of the work was done by composers that worked for less money. It's win-win for them.

One thing I really appreciated about the extended cut soundtrack is that it ended with a reprise of the main theme, just like the endings of ME1 and ME2. An End Once And For All was a beautiful piece of music (except the final few seconds of the original version), but it only served as a callback to Leaving Earth. The new final track works better as the ending-point for the whole series.

I get mad Serenity vibes from the tail end of that track. And in all the right ways. Right now, it's probably my favorite piece in the trilogy. Augh, augh, I love it.

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It's a beautiful track, but my favourite still has to be Suicide Mission. Combining the Mass Effect theme with The Illusive Man track (itself, an amazingly unsettling piece of music), infusing it with all the hopes, fears, and adrenaline that go along with that mission, and then Jack Wall turned the whole thing up to 11.

I'm not sure if we can read too much into that, the scores to ME1 and ME2 were both the work of multiple composers, it's more than possible that Bioware always intended to get multiple composers involved in ME3 and that Clint Mansell was only hired for the main theme.

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In the case of the earlier games my understanding was that Bioware hired Jack Wall and he reached out and selected the others to help, not that Bioware hired a team and expected them to magically gel.